I recently spent the day with the Beacon Course Team based at Derby Road in Bootle. The Beacon course involves one day a week for 12 weeks and is designed to help young people understand fire safety, prevent arson, provide positive role models and help develop confidence, resilience, and self-esteem. The group that I joined consisted of twelve young people from a school in West Derby who were in their sixth week of the course.
The session included a fireworks safety talk, attacks of firefighters talk and a foam induction drill. The firework safety and attacks on firefighters talk both consisted of a PowerPoint presentation combined with video clips. The member of staff, Tony, taking the session used the PowerPoint slides as reference points to have a discussion and then the video clips to supplement the discussion.
As well as these classroom based activities, Tony did a team-building exercise with the group outside. Simple ball games refreshed the team, got them working together and helped to keep their enthusiasm up.
The highlight of the day was the foam induction drill. This consisted of everyone, including myself, getting into Firefighters uniform and going out to the Fire Appliances to learn about and use the different types of hose attachments to create foam. Each member of the group had the opportunity to use the hose and each attachment making the foam vary in thickness. Once everyone had a go there was a large pool of foam which didn’t go unnoticed by the group and before long everybody was covered in foam!
The variety of activities and the constant enthusiasm and dedication from the staff shows why this course is such a success.
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